If snappy is installed, HBase can make use of it (courtesy of hadoop-snappy [28]).
Build and install snappy on all nodes of your cluster.
Use CompressionTest to verify snappy support is enabled and the libs can be loaded ON ALL NODES of your cluster:
$ hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.util.CompressionTest hdfs://host/path/to/hbase snappy
Create a column family with snappy compression and verify it in the hbase shell:
$ hbase> create 't1', { NAME => 'cf1', COMPRESSION => 'SNAPPY' } hbase> describe 't1'
In the output of the "describe" command, you need to ensure it lists "COMPRESSION => 'SNAPPY'"